Before the premiere of the Avengers: End of the game - how would the real Thanos attack on Earth end?

Note the text contains a spoiler to the previous part of the Avengers, or Infinity War .

As we remember, at the end of the Avengers: Infinity War Thanos managed to carry out an attack on all life on Earth (and beyond it too, but let's focus on our planet). Snapping fingers with the hand dressed in the Infinity Glove caused the so-called decimation - decimation of living beings. Although the true meaning of decimation was to kill every tenth enemy, Thanos killed exactly half - largely - random victims.

Let us think about the real consequences of such an attack carried out today on our planet.

Decimation and other mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.

Thanos' attack would probably be comparable to any mass extinction. Some of them killed up to 96 percent. existing marine species and 70 percent land (Permian dying out over 200 million years ago). We can therefore assume that life as such should survive.

There is only one thing: dying, which changes the living conditions, causes the worst to die, and the weakest and the most vulnerable among the population. This opens the field for the growth of new species with more adapted features. Thanos' attack killed randomly - this is a huge difference. There will be both well-adjusted and worse individuals. Potentially, therefore, despite the fact that only a half is knocked out, it can have a more devastating effect on life than dying out 90 percent. the weakest .

The effect of decimation on advanced organisms.

The impact of snapping fingers by Thanos can be assessed differently depending on the complexity of the social life of a given species. The killing of bees may be the end for the swarm - these are specialized organisms, and the swarm can not survive without one of the workers or soldiers groups. Similarly with many mammals - living in flocks often have an advanced hierarchy - the lack of the majority of females or males will cause an imbalance.

It is almost the same with species that are part of a more complex ecosystem - a predator can not survive without the right number of victims, and a victim without a natural predator can multiply excessively, causing a lack of raw materials to live - and that is what Thanos tried to prevent with his ill-conceived method.

Decimation and people.

There is the biggest problem with people ("Of course people are a problem" - as Martian said in the War of the World musical) - they are highly organized, highly specialized and strongly dependent on social and economic structures.

Let's assume that exactly half of randomly selected people have dissipated into dust. For further victims of the Thanos Paradise paradise, additional:

• people who have disappeared, and the life or safety of others directly depends on them: pilots, drivers, doctors performing operations, parents of young children, etc. will bring additional victims;
• people who are in despair, unable to shake off the loss of family and friends who may commit suicide or become depressed;
• most institutions that care about the health and life of citizens suddenly lose half of their employees. Random: there may be security guards, but there will be no surgeons!
• people responsible for producing electricity, food, raw materials, clothes - suddenly they will have to deal with twice as much work. Theoretically, over time, demand should decrease due to the smaller population, but many institutions and companies operate on a larger scale;
• Work in many companies would stop, and the possibility of conducting them would be put into question - the effect may be a deterioration of the economic situation and an increase in unemployment.

I estimate that from 50 percent. human population could actually make up 20 percent. - after deduction of additional victims.

Our health - Thanos's unexpected sacrifice

Each of us carries in our bodies microorganisms living with us in symbiosis and, for example, supporting our digestion. Let's be consistent - also half of them should die, causing our microflora to degrade. This will require supplementation: but will there be half of the ingredients in probiotic preparations?

Similarly, in dairies, yogurt and cheese will start to deteriorate instead of ripening, and the dough will stop growing (yeast is also a living organism).

Thanos, as you can see, would make us quite bigos - I hope Marvel's heroes will deal with him in the Avengers: The end of the game ...

Before the premiere of the Avengers: The end of the game - how would the real Thanos attack on Earth end?